General Motors (GM) was happy to announce that Chevrolet Volt owners have been reaching -- and even exceeding -- the EPA estimated electric range.

According to GM, typical Volt owners are traveling about 900 miles between trips to the gas station. The EPA gave the Volt a rating of 98 MPGe.

GM even found a few owners who reported seldom stops for gasoline during their time of Volt ownership. Brent Waldrep from Michigan, who has had his Volt for 21 months, has racked up over 23,500 miles and visited a gas station only twice.

“The last time, was in August (2012), and I still have about 65 percent of that tank left," said Waldrep. "I go about 9,000-10,000 miles between fill ups.”

Other customers are seeing similar results. For instance, Larry Read from Texas has only filled his tank once in 5,000 miles. Paul Friday from California said he gets about 7,000 miles between gas fill-ups.

“We’ve seen and heard from our Volt owners that they are achieving fantastic performance numbers with their vehicle as many are beating the EPA label estimates,” said Cristi Landy, Chevrolet Volt marketing director. “Our Volt owners are showing the performance potential of driving electric, and having fun doing it.”

GM even said Volt drivers are the most satisfied in the EV industry.

The Volt had a good sales year in 2012, with over 20,000 sold.

In fact, Chevrolet saw a low sales month for the Volt in November 2012 not because demand was low -- but rather, because demand was too high. It said there was low inventory for the Volt for that month because demand had been high in previous months.

The Nissan Leaf -- one of the Volt's competitors -- had to admit that it wasn’t going to hit its sales mark for 2012, which was 20,000 Leafs. Nissan only sold 9,819 Leafs for the whole year -- less than half of its goal, and only 1.5 percent higher than the number it sold in 2011.

I was always skeptical about the Volt until my co-worker ran the numbers for me. Since day 1 he has tracked his exact fuel cost and electricity cost for his volt. Most of his driving is local, though he does have a few 1000km trips on it as well.

Out of pocket for Gas + Electricity (all-in) has been $250 (cdn) for 11,000 km.

Keep in mind this also includes the winter season here in Northern Ontario where the engine runs to assist the heater, even with a full charge.

And what happens to the electric grid when every household owns an electric vehicle? If we thought people turning on the AC in summer puts strain on the grid, wait until everyone turns on the AC and plugs in their cars.

Then power companies will get a better return on their investment and the grid will be largely unaffected since most PHEV charging occurs during off-peak periods such as while the owner is sleeping at night. Base load at night is highly underutilized, adding consumers for that wasted power is better for everyone.

If strain gets too much, utilities can engage in time-of-use (TOU) pricing to encourage off-peak charging. Any utility without TOU clearly has no problem with grid strain yet.

Then the electricity grid adapts to the demand. Money from our pockets go to the local utilities instead of the gas companies and overseas oil producers. They use that money to develop in-country means to provide more power to the grid. They sink R&D into better, cleaner ways of generating electricity that scales with the expected demand as people move to electric vehicles.

Think about it: If you took the money you would have given the Gas companies, and instead gave it to the Electrical companies, they could make significant improvements to infrastructure, develop renewable energy farms (solar, wind, thermal, etc), all of which benefits anything using the grid.

Economically speaking, it also shifts a very large amount of money back inside the country (jobs at the power factories, R&D labs, utilities, supporting industries) and puts the responsibility/control back into the local and federal government.

WRONG.There have been many published stories that if there was wide spread car charging, even off hours, the grid is not prepared for it. AND you think they'll improve the infrastructure. I'm thinking not until they NEED to. Which will be a number of years after it needs to be.

AND the grid, local power companies, does not adapt will. They are all stretched to the limit and have brown outs in the summer months as well.

And evidently there won't be a flood of electric vehicles any time soon. Things will move forward slowly, just like when personal computers became common in the 80s. Try to find an office without a computer now. :)